


Strictly Hush-Hush

by SegaBarrett



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Even though they've met before, F/M, Meet-Cute, Post 3x13, Some descriptions of Frederick's injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 15:33:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4711121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddie comes to visit Frederick in the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strictly Hush-Hush

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Hannibal, and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: Title is from LA Confidential.

Freddie Lounds considered for a moment what she was about to see. In her role as a blog reporter for a particularly tabloid-esque publication, she’d been in hospitals before. Normally, however, it was for embarrassing injuries, people who were important in Maryland society who had been admitted to the emergency room with lightbulbs up their ass and such things. Not like this.

It was a testament to this unknowability that she’d left her camera at home. She had picked it up, put it in her purse, then taken it out again and hid it under some notebooks.

Something made her just not able to, and that was already frustrating her. What was she, anyway, if she couldn’t be the intrepid reporter who always got the story, no matter how sordid it was?

She’d think about that later. There was no time for philosophy. She had told herself she’d go to see Chilton and now she was locked into it. She had already gotten in her car and now she was in the parking lot – it had all gone by in a blur, the way obligations do.

She stopped by the gift shop to pick up a stack of Sudoku books, not that he’d really be in any shape to do them. She also tossed in a copy of The Fault in Our Stars – maybe he’d find it ironic or something.

Freddie turned down a few halls before she ended up in the burn unit. In one room, Frederick Chilton was lying in a hyperbaric chamber. She was glad she hadn’t brought the camera. It was everything she could do not to avert her eyes.

“Hey,” she managed. “I brought some things for you. I thought you might get bored.”

She wondered if he was asleep, if he could sleep in there at all. She pictured herself, curled up on her side with her blankets wrapped all around her, snuggling into her pillow.  
Frederick was trapped on his back in a glass tube, on display for anyone who might want to come by and gape at him. Her heart ached. Sure, she put people’s dirty laundry on display all the time, but even the Polaroid cameras she’d played with as a kid had those moments between taking the picture and having it become real. The lapse before publication, even with a cell phone. Nothing was instantaneous, nothing was immediate.

This was immediate.

She stepped a little closer, and noticed that Frederick’s eyes were open. Well, to be clear, one was. The other was draped shut. 

“Hey. It’s me,” she repeated. “Remember me?”

That was a possibility, of course. Brain damage, traumatic amnesia. 

Frederick Chilton’s mouth moved. His teeth moved.

“Miss Lounds.”

“Freddie’s fine. You don’t need to be formal. I just – did this article get you here?”

She wanted to ask if Will Graham had gotten him here. That seemed to be how it went, most of the time. Bodies piled up and Will Graham was always at the center of it, he and his murder husband Hannibal the Cannibal.

“The dragon got me here.” 

“I see that,” Freddie mused. “Fire-breathing, I suppose.”

She watched as Frederick’s pupil darted around to look at her, trying to figure out if she was mocking him or not.

“Come to write your next story?”

“Maybe. Ready to be a hero?” 

“Do I look like one?” 

His hands weren’t moving. Maybe he’d been restrained, so he didn’t move in the tube, or maybe he was just too tired.

“Hey, it didn’t stop the Phantom of the Opera from getting laid, and canonically he didn’t even have a nose.” Freddie smiled at him, locked her eyes with his. “No story, unless you want it. You know it’s not how I usually do things, but… y’know. Hero discount. It’ll be like Beowulf.”

“It’ll be full of fire and lip puns. Is James Taylor willing to sign off on use of Fire and Rain?” Frederick managed.

“Hadn’t thought of that. ‘Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone.’ Nah, considering that you’re still here. You’re a survivor. Maybe Destiny’s Child instead. We can go over some good choices.”

Frederick’s eye shut, and he seemed to go back into a morphine-induced sleep. 

“Oh by the way,” Freddie whispered, “Will Graham can go fuck himself. You know he’s run off with his old lover, Hannibal? They broke out of custody, disappeared into thin air. Honestly, I hope they eat each other. It’d be kind of a fitting end.”

Frederick’s eye popped open again.

“Why aren’t you off covering that? Sounds like the story of the year.”

“I don’t know. Somehow I’d rather be here with your well done ass.” Freddie smiled at him. “Let me know how the lips go. Maybe we can get you a guest role on Nip/Tuck.”

“We?”

“Yeah. Just try getting rid of me.” Freddie set down the books. “See what you think of these. Hey, maybe next time I’ll bring Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

“Sounds Swedish,” Frederick replied.

“Oh, it is.” Freddie turned to head out, before turning her head. “Oh, and don’t tell anyone that I’ve been by. Don’t want the other journalists to think I’m getting soft already. What’s Danny DeVito’s character say in LA Confidential? Let’s keep it ‘off the record, on the qt, and strictly hush-hush.’” 

With that, she headed out of the room. Next time she’d bring flowers, and chocolate maybe. And hopefully she’d bring the news of the ruin of Will Graham. It might not come today, but it had to eventually – who could lose themselves that completely in another person, fall that deeply that they could ignore any and all faults?

Not her.


End file.
